1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a guillotine cutter and tape affixing apparatus and more particularly to a guillotine cutter capable of cutting adhesive tape smoothly and continuously without any adhesive agent from the adhesive tape adhering to the blade tip thereof, and to a tape affixing apparatus having the guillotine cutter.
2. Description of the Related Art
A planographic printing plate bundle in which a predetermined number of planographic printing plates are accumulated in the thickness direction is usually packed with a light shielding/moisture-proof paper, and a method of then affixing joints of the light shielding/moisture-proof paper with adhesive tape in order to prevent light or air from entering from outside has been widely used.
In recent years, the affixing of the tape has often been carried out with an automatic tape affixing apparatus. Conventionally, the automatic tape affixing apparatus comprises a cutter for cutting the adhesive tape to a predetermined length and an affixing roller which rolls along the surface of the planographic printing plate bundle for affixing the adhesive tape cut with the cutter. As the aforementioned cutter, a guillotine cutter comprising a movable blade and a fixed blade has been widely used.
However, in the conventional guillotine cutter, adhesive agent from the adhesive tape adheres to a blade face of the movable blade because the blade face of the movable blade makes contact with a cut edge of the adhesive tape after the adhesive tape is cut. Then, when the movable blade and fixed blade make contact with each other, this adhesive agent is pushed around such that a gap is generated between the movable blade and the fixed blade, which gives rise to cutting failure whereby the adhesive tape is not cut properly.
Further, feeding failure occurs whereby remaining adhesive tape after cutting adheres to adhesive agent left on the blade faces of the movable blade and fixed blade so that the adhesive tape is not fed properly when a feeding operation is carried out.
Recently, an adhesive agent sticking prevention apparatus in which an adhesive agent sticking prevention agent such as silicone oil is applied to the cutter blade of an adhesive tape affixing machine has been proposed in a prior document (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2004-000937).
However, the adhesive agent sticking prevention apparatus described in the prior document is intended for a rotary cutter having a rotary blade which cuts by rotating from a non-adhesive face of the adhesive tape toward its adhesive face, and the adhesive tape is prevented from adhering to the blade by contacting a contact member, which is structured so that it exudes sticking prevention agent onto an outer face thereof, against the rotary blade, which rotates in a specified direction, to thus coat the blade with the sticking prevention agent.
However, the adhering agent sticking prevention apparatus is considered to be unsuitable for a guillotine cutter because the movable blade of guillotine cutter moves linearly with respect to the fixed blade without rotating, unlike the rotary cutter.
Therefore, in order to effectively prevent reduction of cutting performance due to adhesion and deposit of the adhesive agent of the adhesive tape on the blade face and clogging of the adhesive tape in the guillotine cutter, so as to enable adhesive tape to be cut smoothly even after it is cut plural times, a new adhesive agent sticking prevention mechanism, different from the adhesive agent sticking prevention apparatus described in the above document, is required.